


Twenty Seconds of Surveillance

by sparklight



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Family, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 13:58:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4022464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklight/pseuds/sparklight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Death Star, a few seconds of surveillance from Princess Leia's cell, and Darth Vader.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twenty Seconds of Surveillance

_'This had better work, Lord Vader.'_

The words echoing between one thought and the next as he stared out at the star-studded emptiness, Vader twisted his mouth into a sneer. There might also have been an eyeroll, too, but the faint, thrumming pulse thundering through his head made him abort that movement half-way through. _Who_ was it that had decided the princess was useless _prematurely_?

Not that he was a font of patience by any stretch of the imagination, and the princess' ability to withstand the mind probe had been both infuriating and impressive, but she _was_ their best lead. 

And now she'd lead them right back to her nest. 

There was, of course, the risk they would realise what was going on, but frankly... then they'd have to weigh a detour to try and find the tracker and risk being captured again against going to their destination and giving the rebel high command the plans for the Death Star.

Given the stakes and that they had had to go into hyperspace in a _hurry_ , the former was... improbable.

Turning sharply enough he caught the techs still in the observation deck twitching, Vader stormed out and no, there was no smug smirk, however tiny, on his face.

At the turbolifts, a junior officer caught up to him and didn't really look particularly happy with having done so, dithering long enough Vader let his annoyance bloom outward as he _slowly_ turned to the officer and ignored the lift arriving.

" _Yes_?" One thing the vocoder was good for; audibly enhancing how very unimpressed he currently was, just as the Force was eagerly carrying his irritability on a less physical level. It made even a Force-blind man like the officer in front of him shift (even more) and look around with a twitchy, flickering gaze before he met the dark lord's inscrutable mask.

"T-the surveillance you requested, my lord."

The holo was literally thrust at him, and the second his fingers so much as brushed the device, the officer let it go and took a step back. He snatched it up with a subtle yank on it through the Force, and turned sharply on his heel, entering the lift which he had simply kept in place. He wasn't going to wait on it to come back to the floor he was on, after all.

"Very well."

The young man and his woeful (but expected) lack of fortitude was summarily dropped just as the turbolift did, a thumb sliding unthinkingly over the shiny metal of the holo as the seconds passed. He hardly needed to follow up on possible leads of who the princess' accomplices had been right this moment, but there was time to pass until the escaped ship had come out of hyperspace and they could calculate its location, and then the time it'd take to get there.

So, while there was very little chance the suspected rebel sympathisers were previously known - the captain of the ship and his wookiee crewmate was a vague but improbable possibility - there was also no reason _not_ to follow up on this. Especially as the young man Kenobi had had with him from Tatooine was still unidentified, and known rebel or not, he was of interest simply because he was Force-sensitive and he'd been in Kenobi's company _before_ Kenobi had gotten himself a ship off of Tatooine. 

While he _was_ wondering where the child had come from, the fact that it was _Tatooine_ that Kenobi had picked him up on made it less of a conundrum. It wasn't as if the Empire had any greater presence on that desolate _dustball_ , so a Force-sensitive could easily fly under the radar there.

The doors to the quarters closed behind him with a soft click, and he sat down, considering the holo for a moment.

There was, of course, no surveillance beyond the initial firefight from the entrance hub to the prison block, since they'd done a thorough job of destroying the cameras there. Looking through all the surveillance of the Death Star from after the noted infiltration of the cell block _could_ be done, but if there was anything useful in that mass of data to find, someone else could trawl through _that_.

He would look at something far more contained; the surveillance from the princess' cell.

If there was _any_ scrap of useful information to be found from however few seconds there might be on this holo, he would get it.

Turning the holo on with a quick brush of a finger, the recording coalesced into view after brief, initial static.

The camera gave a wide-angled, top-down look of the cell, with the slab on the right and the entrance to the left, showing the princess laying partly curled up on the slab, though she quickly woke up when one of their infiltrators - in full stormtrooper armour - opened the door and clambered down the stairs.

He was... short, for a stormtrooper, anyway. An observation that the princess echoed shortly after his own thought after a moment of bewildered and then incredulous staring. One could almost think she _hadn't_ been under the mind probe for the amount of time she had, the way she was comporting herself---

 _"Huh? Oh, the uniform."_ The first words were muffled and the young man - no more than a barely grown child, really, judging by the looks of him - pulled off the helmet, revealing a sun-bleached and sloppily-cut mop of hair above lightly tanned skin, and if nothing else they'd have an excellent mugshot from this.

And

then

_"I'm Luke Skywalker! I'm here to rescue you!"_

The rest of the words blurred. The recording did as well, along with the room. Everything was a fine, red haze for an infinite moment where the thundering pulse hammering through his head was _everything_ \- then the room snapped back into focus.

That could _not_ be right!

He almost crushed the device in resetting the recording since it wasn't on automatic loop, but it _didn't change_ upon a second viewing. Or a third.

Or even a _fourth_ , though by that time he was glowering far more at every single detail he could carve out of the flickering hologram of the young man who'd just identified himself as _Skywalker_ as much as anything else.

Something which shouldn't be possible.

Of course, there was more than one Skywalker family on Tatooine. There was no guarantee this was--- no, there was no _chance_ this was anything but an unrelated coincidence---

Slowly, Vader stood up. Walked over to where a report from the cleanup detail on Tatooine which had been on droid hunting duty lay at the end of the table. He could've called it with the Force, of course, but the simple act of walking the few steps it took to reach it grounded him. The press of the soles of his boots against the bottom of his feet, the exact amount of weight and pressure relayed through his prosthesis, the fit of the leather around him, armour on top of that, the weight of his cloak...

He picked up the datapad, turned it on. Mechanical, simple movements that required no thought.

The text slid by in a barely registered scrawl that didn't seem legible, but then, he knew the events that had transpired in general from the verbal report he'd been given.

Escape pod, Jawa sandcrawler, tracking the droids to the moisture farmer family who had bought the droids; of course executed on suspicion of being rebel collaborators.

An attachment contained the official records for the family which had been executed, added after the verbal report since that had been given shortly after the ship - identified as the Millennium Falcon - had forced itself out of Mos Eisley and then off Tatooine.

It took another long moment - or perhaps no time at all - for his brain to register the words blinking at him.

_Moisture farm residence off Anchorhead, Tatooine, Arkanis Sector, R-16_  
_Local I.D.: Z34.57.BV.963_  
_Inhabitants: 3_  
_Owner: Owen Lars_  
_Age: 52_  
_Spouse: Beru Whitesun Lars_  
_Age: 47_  


There was more, but his vision blurred again, took on jagged edges as the datapad slowly cracked in his hands and the shriek of metal overrode the screaming, mutedly pained pulse in his head.

Lars.

Kenobi.

 _Skywalker_ \---

The holo.

Whirling around, the holo - somehow undamaged - slapped into the palm of his outstretched hand even as the table crumpled and twisted, each chair around the table collapsed in on itself, and the walls, floor, ceiling, _buckled_ and that was _not_ enough, not for the implications of what this might (did) mean---

Beeping.

Blinking, Vader stared at the insistently blinking and beeping comlink, and had the urge to simply _crush it_. Since it was attached to the suit in his right arm, however, that would need to be explained since it'd need to be repaired. Explanations that he would not provide. As such...

" _What_?"

And maybe, just _maybe_ , he took a deep, burning pleasure from the way Tarkin's breath caught on the other end of the line, the arrested little silence where he could just _see_ the man twitch backwards a hair. 

_Good_.

"I would appreciate it, _Lord Vader_ , if you didn't rip up my battle station before it has had its first test. A repair crew is on the way," Tarkin said sharply, apparently recuperated from his little hiccup just before, and abruptly disconnected the call. Sneering at the comlink, Vader deliberately stepped down on the twisted pieces of the datapad on the floor, shattering it further and sending black plastic and pieces of metal skittering across the pitted floor.

He strode out of the room as the repair techs were on their way in, scattering them aside by his passing and ignoring them completely. One good thing about a station this large was that it wasn't _hard_ to find an empty conference room with a viewport, allowing him to plant himself in front of it and focus on the empty void and the burning pinpricks of stars.

He was still angry, but soon (not soon enough) the rebels would provide him with ample opportunity to _use it_. But still, the reality of the revelation seemed utterly impossible. _She_ had died before the child could be born, so that boy couldn't _possibly_ \---

 _Yes._ The Force sang in one voice around him, undeniable. On the heels of that truth ringing around him came the whispers of the dark. 

_Claim what's yours._

But he had _nothing_ that was _his_ , for the... child... _couldn't_ \---

 _Yes._ Thunder, pure and singular, and he closed his eyes. Let the respirator's constant cycle force air in and out of his lungs, purified from the outside and further oxygenated. Listened to the roaring half-pain emanating from the not-quite-healed wounds on the back of his head.

 _Join his powers to yours._ The shadows whispered, buoyed by the rising tide of helpless, hopeless, _all-encompassing_ hate.

But _how_ had this even---

The memory that rose up in crystal sharpness of a particular night more than nineteen years ago almost made him _physically_ recoil and Vader swallowed back bile, relaxed his tight fists and then closed them again until the leather creaked. 

By some miracle the room remained untouched.

Or maybe it was merely the conflicted dance of pure Force and the dark that never left that made sure of it.

That was _not_ what he'd meant, but it was the only answer he was provided with.

Later, far later than he would've wished, their arrival at Yavin finally allowed him some proper outlet after spending the hours and hours during hyperspace carefully not thinking of _anything_. Even less of dark-blonde young men eagerly proclaiming they were here to _rescue_ a lone prisoner in a hopeless situation.

Rebel snub-fighters shattered around him when they dared make the run through the trench, satisfying in a way heading capital ships simply _wasn't_. The fighters dwindled one by one and soon they'd be completely out---

The last three ships descended into the trench and even before he closed in on them he felt the bright flickers. A brightness Kenobi had been suppressing with his presence (though rather more through Vader's own _focus_ , perhaps), letting it reveal itself when the old man had died.

Now, it called to him; both through its sheer, if untrained, power and potential and... the actual... connection, though the young man was doubtlessly unaware of it. Not a padawan-master bond, but then, that was _not_ what they were.

The knowledge finally settled in, a perfect piece in a shattered puzzle, and, compared to before, he felt only determination.

Making sure his wingmen would leave the leader to him, Vader waited for his chance.

He'd cripple the fighter, the moon the rebels were on would then be duly destroyed and - and a shot his narrow focus had warned of too late turned one of his wingmen into an exploding ball of debris and sent the other careening off course, glancing off his own fighter before it, too, was destroyed. It forced his fighter into an uncontrolled spin, sending it hurtling away from the Death Star even as it tore through space in its death throes. 

Trailing screams through the Force merely enhanced the end, and Vader cursed as he fought to regain control of his spinning fighter. When he finally _did_ , the urge to steer towards the moon and _immediately_ claim what was _his_ rose up like the fury, but he knew he would need to wait.

He needed to plan.

He needed to---

Realisation coalesced, and with that came thoughts. 

The Death Star was destroyed, thus the surveillance was gone; all but the single holo he still carried with him. The datapad with the report was gone as well, but the files that would undoubtedly have been logged would all need to be purged of the attachment, if not the report itself. Only the attachment held the relevant names. Any records on Tatooine which contained the names would have to be scrubbed as well.

Space scattered around him into hyperspace, and Vader sat back, eyes closed.

There was no way his master would _not_ find out, but this would ensure it took longer than it otherwise would. He would, if he could help it, have as much time as was possible. He _would_ bring the... child to where he _should be_. His son.

Slowly, he pulled out the slightly scuffed holo and turned it on, lighting the otherwise dark cockpit with pale blue highlights. Vader didn't even open his eyes at first, merely listened to the sounds emanating from the recording he clutched in one hand.

_"... the uniform."_

_"I'm Luke Skywalker, I'm here to rescue you!"_

_"You're who?"_

...

_I'm Luke Skywalker, I'm here to rescue you!_


End file.
